Memoirs of a Tree
by Corralero
Summary: It may seem perhaps remiss for an old withered log to claim fellowship with the great Gundam pilots, who fought the wars alone.' Heero, Duo, Trowa, Quatre, Wufei and a Tree. A new perspective is in order...


**Memoirs of a Tree**

Heero kicked me with a wordless frustration he would never let show. Wufei cried against me, leaning into my rigid embrace, as he sobbed for those he had lost. They have often cried here, using their tears to feed the grass that grows between my toes. Quatre has sought refuge here, feeling the peace and steadiness of my wooden heart.

I was hurt by the wars, as they fought a ferocious battle by me. I would like to think they tried to protect me, but their minds are cold when their ire is roused and one tree, one sacrifice, is little to them. The dragon claw of Shelong wrenched my branch from me and tossed it to the forest floor where I could not reach.

They came here in peace too, and whiled away the occasional afternoon. I watched them grow from talented, raw teenagers into men, witnessed a furious row when it all fell apart and didn't see them for a long time. But they came back; the irregular visits of a young one vitiating his elder, less than half aware of what he does and why he returns. They came with girlfriends, and wives, and eventually small bodies climbed over me once more.

They came in old age, and sat, conversing and bickering and reminiscing, as they always had done, and still tensed when my twigs snapped and crackled. A solider can no more stop himself than a tree can stop the growth of ivy.

Eventually they came no more and those they had left behind came less and less. I was content as I always had been, growing and living in my own way.

Their fame and achievements did not lessen as time went on. They became the subject of heritage; their first safehouse enshrined, their diaries exposed, their clothes kept…but not me. I was left alone. I kept my secrets, kept the tears, the kicks, the hopes and dreams, except for when I whispered them to the wind, my leaves chattering to one another as they are wont to do.

And then my energy ran out. I slowed my growing and felt the slow decay of time. My branches became brittle and my trunk hollowed, until eventually I crashed down to rest on my side, and sank into the deep bed of the Earth to sleep. As I lay, wrapped in a blanket of ivy, I thought back over the long years and many acquaintances, and my mind grew slow and dreamy.

I made a nice bench, providing company in my antiquity. They would have liked this as they grew old, and the young joints used recklessly in war and sport paid the price of age. But they were gone, and now I faded too, to live amongst the memories of a fleeting few.

The darkness of my acorn was infinite, deep and warm, and as a young sapling I reached up to the sky, wondering if the black night of space would be the same. They came from that deep dark, and somehow, in my wisdom of old age, I know it was not the nourishing dark of my beginning. As I grew, many things walked the path of life before me, in peace, war, war and peace again. Then the rumble of war reached my roots once again.

They came, one by one, creeping and flitting through the shadows of the night. Keen, wary faces, like foxes with their watchful, knowing eyes. Space-children who handled the living woods with a wary, wondering, pleasing reverence. They slipped past, like dust in the breeze, and were gone.

There was a mansion near by. Not so near that it placed a fence around me and trimmed my branches, but near enough. That must have been their home, at times. I never saw it. Never saw anything other than my clearing and the sky above me, although my leaves and seeds travelled far and wide to wonderful lands. I stayed where I was, waited, watched and grew in my own wisdom.

Trowa came with his music, his flute playing melodies for the shadows of my foliage to dance to. Duo came with stolen pieces of food to share with birds and an unwearyingly companion to talk to as he sat on my branches and treated me to his thoughts.

It may seem perhaps remiss for an old withered log to claim fellowship with the great Gundam pilots, who fought the wars alone. Alone. It can be a dreadful word and a heavy burden. But I can claim in my own small way to have helped, for nothing lightens the soul more than a silent companion, solid in the face of need, reassuring in the face of desperation, calm in the face of panic, and serenity in the midst of war.

I was, even in my age and maturity, as a fresh acorn to those children, whose bodies even now have rejoined the Earth as mine does. I was that slither of hope, that glimpse of new life, the end of the fighting and the peace after, before and forevermore in the endless waltz of time.

**The beginning, middle and end.**


End file.
